Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Art Journal Gymnastics

While the Fab Five were tumbling their way to an Olympic gold medal in London, I've been doing a fair share of artistic gymnastics in the studio. I've got three new art journal pages to show you.

Art Journal 7-28

"Embrace your uniqueness. Time is too short to be living someone else's life." - Kobi Yamada

I began with a background created in Photoshop CS5. Before attaching the buildings, I stitched around them on my sewing machine. I enhanced the background with watercolors and adhered the buildings with matte medium. The circles and swirls were done with acrylic paint. I outlined the circles with a Pitt carbon pencil. After accidentally smearing some of the carbon pencil, I sprayed the page lightly with krylon matte acrylic spray to prevent further disaster :) The writing, windows and dots are done with gel pens.

Art Journal 7-30

"There is no way to re-enchant our lives in a disenchanted culture except by becoming renegades from that culture and planting the seeds for a new one." On the surface, that sounds radical, but to me, it means concentrating on helping someone else and caring about their needs instead of having tunnel vision on my own needs. I think that is the key to finding joy in life again.

I created a digital background and printed it out. I drew the flowers and doodles, and then base coated them with white acrylic. I added color with watercolor paint and FW acrylic inks. I then added line work with gel pens and Sakura pigma micron pens.

Art Journal 7-31

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to Him and He will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5-6

I created a background in Photoshop and printed it out. I painted the tree with acrylic paint and shaded around it with watercolor. I used a patterned oragami paper for the girl's shirt, and glazed over it with acrylic ink. The face and hand are also painted with acrylic ink. Initially, I used a patterned paper for the skirt, but I didn't like the result. I used acrylic paint to paint over it. The outlining of the tree and the girl was done with pastel pencil. This time, I remembered to spray the page with matte spray before I smeared pastel all over it :) That's not to say that I didn't still make a mess - I forgot that I had painted the green leaves with watercolor, and when I went to collage over top of them, I had a green blob instead. Fortunately, I had based the leaves with white acrylic paint, so I was able to wet them and wipe away the mess. The line work and writing were done with gel pens. I also did some rubber stamping with one of my hand-carved rubber stamps.

Now, since you've so patiently read my ramblings, I have two new journal backgrounds for you to download for personal use only. They are both variations of backgrounds used for my own pages.

I hope you have fun with them! We'll visit again soon.

Until next time,

Comments

I love all three and the downloads as well...my fav is the second one..I just really am drawn to the colors...words and ideas you created...it burst with inspiration and joy..and courage...what a delightful blog you have..!